We’re back from our trip, and I’ll post photos of that tomorrow. Meanwhile, a quick Violet update: She’s grown a LOT in two weeks, and today had her first real mouthful of baby cereal, which isn’t cereal at all but more of a gruel. We’d tried this before, but she wasn’t into it, and neither were we. Now it’s more needed, since she’s needing more and more to eat, while I have the same supply available. She wasn’t too into her gruel, but we will keep trying. Meanwhile, there is always the spoon to play with.

In other news, she is going to crawl any minute. She is getting up on her hands and feet and just staying there for a few seconds. She also scoots pretty efficiently on her back using her head and feet. I’ll keep you posted.

I am busy today packing for our trip east, but Jeremy has recently posted two things that are especially worth checking out in the way of appreciating the Internet and what it—and Jeremy—can do:

Many Gs

Extra points for “butt”

Hung out this weekend at two social events where Vibble was the only little one. Both events were filled with good food, good friends, and laughs. When we had a kid, I worried we’d lose some of our friends to the “we don’t have that much in common anymore” thing. But Violet has been welcomed, even adored, by our friends, and no one seems to mind having her along for the party. In my L.A. circles, I’m generally the only Friend With a Kid (F-WAK), and I appreciate that the people I love are cool with that. And I have to be honest: I especially appreciate that the friends who are such amazing cooks are cool with it.

Yesterday I woke up in a bit of a mope and stared at the crap on my desk that I need to do. Then I checked blogs, including Jeremedia, and I decided to change direction and take advantage of my freedom and Vibble’s portability and go to the Natural History Museum. The animatronic dinosaur isn’t there Mondays and Tuesdays it turns out, but I wasn’t disappointed. We had a great afternoon cruising the fantastic taxidermy, the Insect Zoo, the California history exhibit, and the butterfly garden. I also learned that margays can rotate their hind feet so that the claws point backwards. And I was fascinated to learn about the manroot. If any of my gardeny friends wants to grow one of these completely useless bad-boys, I’d pay to see it!

At five months and a week or two, Vibble is turning out to be a seriously easy going baby. Things that make her happy include:

[1] breathin’

Well, really that covers it. She lights up when people talk to her in chirpy voices, lights up for her mom and dad, grins with pride when she rolls on the floor, grins and laughs in her doorway jumper. The only thing that makes her unhappy seems to be sleepiness. Ninety-nine percent of the times she fusses, we find we can calm her with a Nuk and a swaddle, which ease her into sleep.

She had more shots today and weighs not quite 15 pounds. The doctor says she’s growing well.

She’s smack in the middle of the slimy phase, the one where babies put everything in their mouths. We’re somewhat skeezed by this, but mostly proud to see her progress in the realm of coordination; for so long, she could yank out the Nuk but couldn’t do much in the way of putting it back except wham it at her face with frustration (and, I’m sure, a little pain). Now she can return the little cork to the bottle. THANK GOODNESS. I know pacifiers can be controversial, and there are arguments both for their use and for their avoidance. With Vibb there’s no question. MUST! HAVE! NUK! Our collection grows and shrinks as we purchase and purchase and lose the things all over town.

In addition to having pacifiers on hand at all times, we must also have the new interest: TOYS. She’s into the bright, shiny, squishy, rubbery little baby toys we’ve been amassing for months. It seems every piece of gear comes with some little toys, and she slime-soaks and chucks them all. Here there is constant washing of Nuks, smiley-faced rattles, soft-books, and teethers.

The final item we must have with us now at all times, without fail, is a well-stocked diaper bag. Poop, poop, and more poop, and at least 50 percent of the time, a new outfit is required. For each of us.

Yesterday Violet participated as a research subject at the UCLA Baby Lab. This entailed watching a short video in which her eye movements were tracked by a cool computer within the screen. Afterwards, the researcher showed me a graphic of the movements her eyes had made during the viewing. She was a trying subject, wouldn’t sit still. But it was an interesting experience.

I know I am behind on putting together videos, but I’m working on it. Meanwhile, here are a couple of short ones to tide you over. I recommend you click on “watch in high quality”:

Boing Boing

Slurp Splash Slurp

Violet’s first time with a non-family babysitter tomorrow. She will be fine, I might not. It’s just for two hours, mostly for my own easing into the process. Steve and I will go out to dinner. Maybe on the front stoop.

Me, as Stevel removes his iPhone from his pocket: “Put it away!”

Stevel: “I’m just checking the time—”

Me: “I know you’re just checking the time, that is the sixth time you’ve checked the time in two minutes.”

Stevel: “It changes.”

I’m quite excited and proud to say my husband’s game is now available in the iPhone Apps store! It’s called QUORDY, it’s just $2.99, and you can buy it on your phone or via iTunes. It’s a word game, and you can play against friends. Please tell everyone you know who has an iPhone. I promise they won’t be annoyed with you, because this game is so much fun that those of us who have been testing it for Stevel are already addicted to it.

QUORDY in the iTunes application store

That’s why I took this photo. Of the cat. Watching Baby Einstein. (Kitten Einstein?) So, your vote: Is she thinking …

(a) “Ah, finally! Baby Beethoven, excellent. I cannot believe they brought that Mozart tripe in here. That is not “music.” Beethoven—now that’s music. Ah! But Mozart, hmph. That cad. What kind of role model is he for this youngster?”

or

(b) “Mousey? Mooouuuseeeeeey? Mousey! Mousey mousey mousey!”

It is now the intersection between “the middle of the night” and “the wee hours of the morning.” There are baskets of dirty laundry on every piece of furniture in the living room. And there is a used diaper in a little bundle on the kitchen counter. It doesn’t matter which one of us put it there this time. What matters is that none of you will ever eat at our house again. And that’s cool by me, because I don’t like to cook.

As many times a day as I wipe that counter with a Clorox wipe to sanitize it because there is a FRAGILE BABY in this house, that counter is now experiencing the equivalent status of a bathroom floor onto which a toilet has overflowed, and that fragile baby is the reason. But oh man is she ever forgiven.

Just some new photos.

We would have to move away immediately and never look back.

Don’t worry, Mom, those stains will all come out with Zote; if I’d had a sliver of it in the diaper bag like I normally do, they would have been gone when I emerged from the restroom. And yeah, no changing table in the coffee shop, I guess they don’t hope for a lot of infant customers there. Now that Vibble can reach out and grab stuff and move around, the technique I’ve counted on so far with a cushion of paper towels under the waterproof mat (diaper for a pillow) is useless.

Since that post, yet another outfit took one for the team. We recently switched from Huggies to to SGs, and we like them better for so many reasons, but even they were no match for Vibb’s rocket launcher tonight. Poor kid wants to be on my lap so badly, but she had already been relegated to the bouncer, on account of the fact that she spent the afternoon teaching herself to SPIT and was spraying milky slime all over the keyboard. And now she’s in there naked. Stevel has promised to give her a bath when he awakes from an evening nap. A pressure-hose may be required.

Anyway, I need to be at my desk right now because Sarah-Novelist is introducing me to “So You Think You Can Dance” with strategic links to YouTube clips. Incidentally, she is weeping right now in her living room, watching these dancers.

I am reminded of two things: (1) the dance classes Cheri and I took as kids, which we were really only half-into, but into enough to keep going for a couple of years, and (2) the horrid routine to a version of “Cecelia” by a band called “X2″ that my friend Sarah Meny and I put together at her house in 7th grade. It was AWFUL. Thankfully, no one ever saw it. I know there was one part where a whistle blew in the song, and we pretended to blow whistles. My path NOT toward “So You Think You Can Dance” was laid out before me. Sigh.

* Warning: The following content may not be suitable for Jeremy Roush.

So I finished my editing project and met this morning with two members of the group who had written the book. And an hour into the meeting Violet dropped a diaper bomb that was completely uncontained. I looked down to see the mustard running out of the bottom of her pantleg. It was an awkward interruption to our discussion. What followed was an impromptu bath for Vibble in the restroom. She did a lot of rolling around on the nasty restroom floor, and I could not seem to keep her in my paper-towel nest. Lucky for Baby, I had a spare outfit in her size. Sadly, I was not so lucky and had to accept my new role as human-wad-of-toilet-paper.

So that’s my baby poop story. What’s yours?

This is my friend Emily, age 8. She lives in Penna. and is the daughter of my longest-time friend, Tracey. Emily is having her tonsils taken out today, and her mom is one nervous girl. Please send your positive energies in their direction.

When Steve first met Emily, at her house, he was with me, and she said to him, “Why are you so small?” He replied, “Look who’s talking.”

Also, if you’re feeling charitable, please go to this link and donate a few bucks to the fund for helping with medical costs for an acquaintance of ours from our Savannah days who was randomly shot at point-blank range by a stranger a few days ago: Why?

I did something today that I’m not that proud of. I sat my four-month old in front of the TV so I could get some things done. It’s even worse than it sounds. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, just a baby-blanket toga. See for yourself.

It was the No. 6 debut of a DVD called Baby Mozart, which was gifted to Violet by her grandma, and though I have never seen anything so inane, the kid loves it. She watched it repeatedly, giggling and gesturing toward the TV all the while. Thus, en route to No. 6 as of this afternoon: Baby Bach and Baby Beethoven.

Incidentally, if anyone with a video camera feels like getting rich, these things are $16 each and feature 30 minutes of footage primarily of toys, fruit, and a hand waving a sock puppet around. And were they available, I would immediately order Baby Petty, Baby Seger, and Baby Stones.

Violet’s initiation into TV-babysitting practices followed two days of her playing and sleeping next to me as I edited an exciting project about responsible land development. Here she is conked out by my laptop. It’s actually been a cozy work experience with this project, having my two girls (here’s my other girl) join me. And now that the evening has passed, and I’ve managed to bathe and even dress my child, it’s looking a little less like someone needs to call Family Welfare Services on me.

Meanwhile, Vibble seems perfectly happy with everything.

Violet went to her first movie today, WALL-E, on the Disney Studios lot in Burbank. She slept through all but the last five minutes, which she watched with mild interest. It’s a great movie. Go see it soon, and then you’ll know what I mean when I say to you, “Directive.”

It’s been a week of firsts. Violet had her first taste of baby rice cereal, a mixture of ricey powder and milk. Her doctor had warned us she might find it “unfamiliar.” Indeed, with no expression on her face, she rejected it as a foreign substance. Day 2, same thing. We’ll see about day 3.

She continues to roll over onto her stomach and prop herself up on her elbows. She is usually quite pleased with this for about five minutes. Then she starts to fuss with increasing volume until she is flipped back over by a tall person. She also loves to be held up “standing,” although she’s quite a dreamer; her feet will have to be a lot less like little dinner rolls if she is ever going to use them for standing on. She also continues sucking on the same two fingers that Steve was known for sucking on when he was little. Every day she seems more and more like him in subtle and overt ways. (Her eyebrows and ears are really filling in.) The little Steveling.

Most characteristic of this stage with the kid are the sounds she makes. She takes great pleasure in the sensation of making noise with her mouth. There are many variations, but my favorite is, “Ooooooooh!” Overall, personality-wise, she is a baby who seems to enjoy just being alive most of the time. A smiley one.

My nose is still bleeding and crusting and bleeding again. Thank you all for your advice, I’ve tried a lot of it, and it’s helping. And yes, Cheri, I will stay away from the scary ER.

I’ll leave you with this lovely found poem from our restaurant menu today; may you learn from it and feel happy: The important thing …

My nose has been actively seeping blood for six days. The insides of my nasal passages seem to have left behind on the plane from Detroit any desire to be normal. I’ve tried some great products, thanks to friends’ advice, but nothing seems to be working. I’m losing pillowcases and shirts, not to mention every time I cough, a giant clot flies from my mouth. Gross, yes. Yes. And uncomfortable. Anyway, any ideas?

In fifth grade, the boys and girls were separated for an afternoon. While the boys went to Mrs. Stillman’s room to ask questions like, “What does ‘rubber’ mean?,” we girls gathered in Mrs. Leonard’s room to meet with the school nurse to watch Julie’s Story and hear the answers to questions like the one Michele Steve asked: “What happens if the string falls off?”

But in 2008, we need to add an important new chapter to this lesson: How to Properly Google a Man. No woman should go on a date without a thorough Google, as I learned too-late in Savannah after an unfortunately POST-date search-engine session revealed that the guy I’d gone out with that evening either (a) had two kids and a wife and wanted to move to Australia to become a golf pro, or (b) was weird enough to claim to have two kids and a wife on some golf bulletin board in order to get tips on how to move to Australia and become a golf pro. Either way, sketchy, no? (He had a very unusual name, and some of the details in the bulletin-board post confirmed it was indeed the very same guy.)

Anyway, I’ll be teaching Violet to do this as I coach her about being mindful of the image she presents of herself online (try not to mention your boobs or poop more than three times per blog entry, for example). After the obvious networking sites (MySpace, FaceBook, Classmates, etc.), it becomes all about keywords. Here’s how you do it:

[1] Remember to try alternate spellings of his name, including obvious nicknames (e.g. “Steve,” “Stephen,” “Steven,” “Stevie”).

[2] After this it becomes all about keywords. Try his name and the name of his company, or his name and his hobby (For example “Steve LaVietes” and “Rock Band” brings up a link to this).

[3] Skim relevant return articles thoroughly in search of additional keywords. If at the bottom of an article in his office newsletter about his latest game of basketball with the accounting dept. team there’s a quote in which he mentions that he had to skip post-game celebrations to feed his chihuahua, Google his name and “chihuahua.” Then Google his name and “accounting,” his name and the company name, etc.

[4] Don’t limit yourself to the first three returns. Skim the first 10-20 returns the search engine spits out. Never know.

[5] In the network sites, be thorough. Click on his friends (esp. the female ones), and read comments he has made to them.

[6] If anything sketchy pops, but you still want that date, you can always check your state’s sex offender registry. I mean, that’s what it’s there for, right?

It should be noted, and taught to our daughters, that Googling doesn’t cover everything. On the Internet we can be whoever we want to be, instead of who we really are. The thing is, though, the savvier you become at using the Internet to do little background checks, the likelier you are to find information about someone that doesn’t quite sync up with that MySpace page (e.g. On MySpace, he says he’s 16, but he is listed on the Board of Directors page for a major corporation … hmmmm).

Isn’t this terrifying?

Please, girlfriends, if you have anything to add to this lesson, post comments. (Please, Dad, keep it to under nine paragraphs.)

The trip was great. Violet is a dream on a plane at this age. When not asleep, she is grinning at the passengers around us until everyone is in love with her. She’s quite adaptable to eating and having her diaper changed on planes, on the floor in an airport terminal, anywhere. She sleeps soundly in the Baby Bjorn for hours. She did have some fussiness this weekend, but my sense was that she was pretty affected by changes in time and routine this trip. Jet Lag for Baby. She had trouble falling asleep a few times when she was clearly exhausted. But she’s recovering just fine here today.

I’m so happy I got to see my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Enjoyable visiting, couldn’t get enough. My grandparents look wonderful and are making progress on the final paring-down of all the stuff they’ve accumulated over the years to make their move into their retirement community in Florida complete. My cousin Elyse talked to me about how things are going with college and her boyfriend of four years. She’s content, enjoying her independence and future possibilities. Olivia is a graceful, intelligent, and observant beauty. Audrey Hepburn, minus any ambition to be noticed. Lillian is instant buddies with anyone who wants to GO OUTSIDE, for any reason. She entertains herself reading otherwise, and she, too, is intelligent and beautiful. Seth was off at Basketball Camp, so, regrettably, I missed seeing him. But we had a large group for Father’s Day, and I soaked in my family and enjoyed the small-town walkability of Howell. It was more than enough to balance the uncomfortable flights.

But enough about me, here are some photos!

Today I had my sixth doctor’s visit, including that fun day at the ER . This time, I think we’re getting somewhere. My doctor feels fairly certain it’s a case of inflammation in the connecting tissues around my coccyx bone. Basically, arthritis. Treatment involves anti-inflammatories for two weeks and hot baths twice a day. I asked if a heating pad would do the trick, and the doctor said, “Why? Are you too lazy to take a bath?” So there’s just no getting out of it, I must take my baths, DOCTOR’S ORDERS.

The kicker is that this coccyx-bone inflammation? It’s not common with my stats. Specifically, the doctor said he hasn’t seen someone my age, with the size baby I had (small), and with the short delivery time (about 20 minutes), have this issue. My sister said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re just not really built to have babies, after all.” No. But to make milk? YES. Without getting into details, I’m quite the surprising success at that.

If the anti-inflammatories don’t work, an X-ray would be called for, but he is very, very sure it’s not a fracture and that I’ll be just fine in two weeks. Which would be GREAT. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it more than a few hundred times, but I am in PAIN.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen “Napoleon Dynamite,” you probably don’t get that title. Also, your life is just a little less rich with laughter than it could be.

And now Vibb and I are off to Michigan. AKA the Mitten State … and if you’ve never seen a field of ripe mittens, you haven’t lived!

We got back yesterday from three days in San Francisco. Violet’s first (and second) plane ride was a success. She was a dream. Really, there were only two things that affected us in any negative way with having her along:

[1] Carrying luggage and gear for a baby on a trip is sort of like that scene in “Spaceballs” where the guys are hauling the princess’ luggage across the desert.

[2] Violet dropped a massive diaper-bomb while we were on a walk, miles from our hotel. We managed to change it, employing teamwork and agreeing that her little outfit had taken one for the team and could not be salvaged. So Violet got a carefully orchestrated diaper change, wipe-down, and new outfit on a park bench. She was fairly agreeable.

The highlight of the trip was our hotel room, which ended up having a spectacular view of Union Square, the city beyond, and beyond that, the bay. The weather was gorgeous. We enjoyed a dinner the first night at the Cheesecake Factory, a restaurant I typically avoid because of its long lines and so-so dinner fare, but the SF one overlooks Union Square (and it was time for more Godiva cheesecake, it was JUST TIME).

We did a little shopping, a lot of walking, some hotel room hanging out and napping. I’m recharged, and just in time to turn around and fly to Michigan on the red-eye tonight with Violet … because once you’ve done Baby’s First Trip, you’re like, Baby’s SECOND TRIP, let’s get on that ASAP.

OK, here are Photos from the LaVietes Family Vacation to San Francisco 2008. Click on “View Slide Show.”